That Broken Road
by ColitaDeRana
Summary: This was started for the walking dead kinkmeme several months ago. A group of men come to the farm intent on taking the women with them. Shane gets in their way, then he and Rick have to deal with the fallout. Noncon.
1. Chapter 1

__I do not own the show or characters featured here.

_So, this was written (was started, more accurately) for the twd_kinkmeme over on livejournal. It's currently still in progress, though there are more parts posted on livejournal that I have posted here. I've been a bit stuck for inspiration on this story, so I thought that maybe cleaning up parts and compiling them here would me get back in the writing mood. I'll be uploading the rest of the story over the next few days. I'll need time to edit each individual chapter._

* * *

Logically, Rick should have known something like this would happen. He had been on the force for over a decade. He had seen first-hand people could be—the villainy that existed in everyone, like jagged glass punctuating every human soul. Murder, rape, violence; they'd been everyday occurrences before the walkers came and brought the world to an end. He'd been naïve to think that it wouldn't continue even after humanity went to shit.

He hadn't been expecting it from this group, though. They were _soldiers_, survivors from the military base. A group of nine men who had come by the farmhouse looking for supplies and decided that the group's women were more valuable commodities than fresh meat and canned food. Rick had always thought soldiers were held to higher standards. To protect and honor and serve, home front and country.

Rick ran in the direction where he had heard a gunshot from earlier. He had a rifle slung across his back, Python in his holster, achingly heavy in the moment, a weight he felt with every frantic step. It felt like his lungs were more fire than air. He'd stopped at the house to find all the women there but Andrea and Lori and hadn't waited, had set off without backup, Herschel shouting at him from the porch.

Over a bend in the hill, he saw two figures in the tall grass. He recognized the bright pink of Lori's favorite shirt and dug his heels in, made his legs move faster.

Lori was sitting on the ground, flat on her ass, legs tucked awkwardly in front of her, Andrea's head and shoulders in her lap. Andrea's eyes were closed, her mouth open. Rick couldn't tell if she was alive or dead.

"What happened to Andrea?" he asked, and Lori, terrified and watery-eyed and trembling said

"She's okay, I think. They um," Lori stopped to tenderly cradle Andrea's head, brush a few strands of bloody hair from her forehead. She tapped her thumbs soft against Andrea's cheeks. "They knocked her out. She kept putting up a fight when they tried to get us to go. She managed to get a shot off at one of them. She would have killed him too, if they hadn't hit her."

Rick knelt down in the grass to check, put his fingers to Andrea's temples, felt his right hand skid through blood. A single wound, superficial blood loss, enough force to knock her unconscious. He guessed someone had pistol whipped her. Butt of a rifle, maybe. He thought she'd be alright. She had good color to her.

"What about you?" His chest was tight and his throat hurt, too dry from the ragged breathing he'd been doing. He didn't want to know, but he had to. Just the thought, the knowledge of what they'd wanted to do, made him a hundred kinds of mad, made him more things than he knew.

"They didn't," Lori said, but the strap of her shirt was torn, and he could see her bra underneath. Lori saw him looking and shook her head. "Shane." She closed her eyes against the memory of something terrible.

Then Rick remembered Shane. Shane had been the one to stay behind. With his ankle he'd never have been able to keep up running through the woods. So he'd stayed behind to protect the women, to protect Carl and Lori, and Rick should have guessed that the thing with Garth was just a diversion, a tactic to split them all up.

"Where's Shane?"

Lori pet Andrea's hair again, held her in her lap like a child, like she and Andrea were childhood best friends. She made shushing sounds that Rick knew weren't for him.

"He stopped them," Lori whispered, quiet out of grief maybe, quiet out of fear. "He had his shotgun aimed on one of them, the leader, I think. He told them to leave. I thought that was stupid of him to give monsters like that the option." Lori hung her head and Rick understood. There had been eight of them. Fast as Shane was, the shotgun only held five rounds. "They laughed at him. Said they could make a deal." Lori's face twisted and she dropped her voice an octave, to a sound mean and low. She put in just the right inflection. Rick could hear someone else. "They said he could go first."

"What happened next?" Rick prodded, careful, but Lori was taking too long. Rick needed to know if he had to retrieve a body or a man.

Lori lifted a hand to point past Rick's shoulder. There was a corpse on the grass. The guy was missing near half his head, his eye and cheek and most of his brain blown out the back. There was a puddle of red around him, thick and clotted, weeds painted black. It was the blood from someone that hadn't already been dead when they'd lost it.

"They stabbed him." Lori touched her fingers to her throat, the dip just to the right of her pulse point, up high on the collarbone. "Then they dragged him off." She didn't need to show Rick the general direction, he could tell from the mess on the ground. The dirt and the drag marks and the blood. "I haven't heard anything since."

He gave Lori his spare gun, motioned towards Glenn and T-Dog coming out of the woods and into the field.

"Have Glenn and T-Dog help you and Andrea get inside. The other women are already at the house. Then tell Daryl and Glenn I'm going to need their help."

Lori nodded, but he could see her fingers twitching, and he knew she wanted to reach out to him, to latch on. He wanted it too. He wanted to hold her and breathe and know that she was okay, feel the press of her flesh and blood and bone.

But he had to find Shane first.

* * *

Rick followed the trail of blood and disturbed dirt out into the woods, through a clump of close grown trees. He jumped over a shallow ditch. The stagnant water was dotted red, mosquitoes quivering on the surface, larvae dotted in patches, trembling fine as silk. He thought he had to be getting closer. It felt like he'd been sprinting for miles and it didn't make sense that they'd bring Shane out all this way to kill him, not when they could have shot him point black to the stomach or chest or head. He had a feeling he was dealing with a hostage situation. Shane exchanged for one of the women, maybe. But Rick Grimes didn't play that game. He didn't trade one life for another and these poor excuses for soldiers would learn that soon enough.

He didn't see Shane until he was almost on top of him. Rick made his way through a thick patch of brush, bushes tall enough he had to shield his eyes from thorns and spiky leaves, and nearly stepped on Shane's outstretched hand lying limp and flat in a small indentation of the forest floor. Rick stopped and swallowed, felt that first flare of hurt and anger build within him, surge like a wave through his blood. Finding Shane meant he was dead. Rick wasn't a man for revenge but for once, he wanted to make someone pay.

Rick pressed fingers to his eyelids, trying to hold back the weight and heat of the tears collecting underneath. He couldn't cry. Glenn and Daryl were on their way. He couldn't break composure in front of the group. Not when they looked to him. He could only afford to be vulnerable around Lori and Shane, the people who had known him from before. He had responsibilities. His sadness was their sadness, his pain an extension the group latched onto. He couldn't have that.

But then, Shane's fingertips twitched, and Rick saw the rise and fall of Shane's back, streaked with blood, dark with sweat, and he dropped down, knelt in mud made not with water but with Shane's blood, and felt the steady thread of Shane's pulse thrumming beneath his chin. And he almost laughed as he let out a sigh of relief, all the emotion that had collected in him, all the grief.

Shane face down in a pile of broken sticks and rotten leaves. Ants marching single file to and from the gash across his forehead, trying to pick up flesh and lick up the blood. Rick bent down and brushed them away with his fingertips, brushed Shane's slippery skin. He was in bad shape. He started to check for other wounds, broken ribs, stabs to the back, shattered bones.

And what he saw made his hand close into a fist against the dirt, made his throat squeeze shut.

Shane's belt unbuckled, pants tugged down, naked skin and_ blood_ and he wanted to scream. He thought they'd managed to avoid this. He'd sent Shane to protect the women. He'd never once thought about protecting _Shane_.

Slowly, Rick pulled Shane's pants back up far as he could, then he gently rolled him over onto his back. Shane's face was a mess. The left side of his jaw was already splotched and swollen purple. The cut across his forehead stretched from temple to temple. His nose was crooked, bent. It made a whistling sound each time Shane breathed. The worst was the stab wound on his upper chest, right where Lori had said it would be, jammed into the collarbone Shane had broken during training at the police academy. Rick put a palm there to help ebb the flow of blood, pressed in with all his weight, bit his tongue when Shane didn't even stir against the pain.

"Rick?" Glenn called out and his voice echoed in the stillness.

Rick pulled his hands away, smeared and slicked crimson and reached down, fingers fumbling as he did up Shane's belt, made it look good as new. Close as it could be. He felt that wave of sick come over him again and he wanted to throw up and cradle Shane's broken face and cry.

"Here," he yelled, voice hoarse like it had been that day he'd woken up in the hospital, like he'd swallowed barbed wire rubbed with salt. "Over here."

"You alone?" Daryl asked out of necessity, because he needed to know what to expect: a body or confrontation. Rick was grateful to have Daryl around.

"I've got him," he said, moving his hands back to apply pressure to Shane's collarbone. "I've got you."


	2. Chapter 2

I do not own the characters featured here.

_Thank you so much to The Dramatic Sneeze for reviewing!_

* * *

Glenn stood in a sliver of sunlight and waited for Daryl and Rick to catch up. His shirt was stuck to his back with sweat and he twitched, gun heavy in his fingers, at every rustle in the trees.

Daryl had Shane draped over his back, fireman's carry, grunting and sweaty and walking slow, shoulders slanted forward, and dots of blood rolled down Shane's neck and dripped, left a scarlet trail behind them, like teardrops on the dirt.

"Can't do it," Daryl said, wheezing, stopping to slide Shane down. "Bastard weighs a ton." Shane and Daryl were the same height, but Shane was bigger, broader, and Daryl had already been carrying Shane for over a mile. Glenn wanted to help, though he knew he wouldn't be of any real use.

Shane's head flopped forward as Rick brought one of Shane's arms around his shoulder, helped to hold Shane up like he'd helped hold up Daryl the week before. A bit of blood and saliva dripped from Shane's half open mouth, smeared his chin a darkened pink, angry and purple bruises blooming underneath.

"How much farther?" Rick asked, palm on Shane's chest to check his breathing, fingers drifting up to check his pulse.

"Half a mile and we're back in the field, I think." Glenn tried to trace the path of their footsteps back, to calculate the distance in his head. Running he moved faster than they could go carrying Shane, a four minute run translated to a fifteen to walk. "Is he—" He stopped, because he almost didn't want to continue, not after the look on Rick's face, that wide eyed hope and determination. That look of wanting, _needing_, for things to work out okay. Shane was, after everything was said and done, the things the world had fallen into, Rick's best friend. "Will he make it?"

"Of course he will." Rick shouldered more of Shane's weight; motioned with his head for Daryl to get Shane's other side.

Glenn wanted to believe him. He'd always been able to put his faith in Rick, to trust him, but there was blood dried stiff all along Shane's front, fresh stuff still leaking, swollen face and swollen nose and Glenn had never seen someone so beat up in his life. Shane could have brain damage or worse. Shane already looked worse than dead.

Daryl nodded at Glenn, reassuring, to urge him on, and his eyes were carefully empty. Daryl didn't know if Shane would be survive the trip back and that made Glenn move faster, clear an easier path through the brush, kicking rocks and sticks and fallen branches out of the way. He kept remembering the week before, in that well, the smell of a rotten walker in the dark, dank, a thick stink, snarling and clawing and his first sweet breath of sunlight, Shane's hands curled in the rope, hauling him up. Shane had brought him out practically on his own, risked falling in too, and Glenn owed him, wanted to pay him back.

They made it to the farm in eleven minutes. Rick and Daryl running fast as they could manage; Shane's feet dragging through the grass, trail of blood he left behind for walkers to follow. T-Dog met them on the porch, grabbed Shane under his shoulders, helped carry him in, took some of that burden off Rick and Daryl who were trembling as though they'd run ten miles, shivering, muscles overworked.

Herschel directed them inside and they set Shane onto an already turned down bed. The same bed Carl had been laid up in, sheets spotted in places with Carl's blood—brown now, faded, no longer that startling red.

"Patricia, get his clothes off him," Herschel said, frowning at the blood stained shirt, at the mud crusted along the front of Shane's pants. Glenn thought he saw blood there too.

"Herschel, you need, they—" Rick's faced twisted and he bit his lip, like he was trying to figure out just what to say. Finally Rick leaned in close and said something, low, inaudible, into Herschel's ear, something he didn't want Glenn or Daryl or T-Dog or anyone, especially Carl, clustered in the doorway to know.

Whatever it was, Herschel set his mouth into a thin line before he had Maggie usher them out of the room. Maggie put her hands on Glenn's back, gentle, thumb against his spine, and he wanted to ask her what had happened while he, Rick, Daryl, T-Dog, and the others had been out. Maggie's hands were unsteady and there were tears lingering in the edges of her eyes, bright and threatening to spill.

"Maggie," he said, and he wanted to hug her to make her feel better, but everyone was watching, and her father was waiting, and her smile was weak as she shut the door. Glenn didn't know what to make of it, of anything she did these days. He just knew he wanted to be there for it, whatever it was.

Everyone was out standing in the parlor, except for Andrea, who was sitting, dazed, on the couch. She had a bandage around the side of her head and Dale was kneeling in front of her, fingers in front of her eyes, making her concentrate and count.

"Three," Andrea said, blinking.

"Dad," Carl whispered. The sound of his voice made Glenn twist his cap in his hands, wring the material like he was trying to squeeze water from it. "Is Shane hurt bad?"

"Seven." Andrea batted away Dale's hands.

Lori pressed Carl's face against her. Lori who was wearing a different shirt from what she'd had on that morning. Faded violet flannel to replace the tank top and the pink. He'd make sure to ask Rick about everything later.

"He is." Rick cupped Carl's cheek, hid that fear from earlier like only Rick could. "But you were hurt a whole lot worse. So was I, when I was in the hospital."

This seemed to calm Carl a bit. He reached up and tugged Rick's hat further down on his head.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No baby." Lori dragged her nails across Carl's scalp. Her eyes were somewhere else. And suddenly, Glenn didn't need to know exactly what had happened to _know_. The gravity of the situation, the denial, it was there, palpable, strong enough for Glenn to taste. "You need your rest."

It had been something bad.

He'd known what the group from Fort Benning had wanted, of course. He wasn't stupid; he'd just never really thought that people did that sort of thing. He'd seen it in movies, heard about it on the news, but never to his face, not with his own friends. People had to stick together, not pull each other apart.

He wanted to ask if there was something, anything, any place he could run out to, some magical cure. He didn't have anything else to offer.

"I could go get more bandages," he said, not to anyone in particular, to himself maybe. Because his stupid mouth sometimes felt the need to take up space, to fill silences with words. "Some of those instant ice pack things."

"Herschel says he's doing alright on supplies." Rick clapped him on the shoulder.

Rick's hands were covered in Shane's blood.

"What we need to do," Dale said, letting Andrea put her head onto a pillow, drift to sleep. "Is wait."

They broke off then. Carol and Lori went outside to gather things off the clothesline. T-Dog went with them, gun drawn, and they were all a bit jumpy, on edge. Glenn kept seeing the wild spark to Garth's face, heard the calm way he explained things, how all men had _needs_, dirty talk about breasts and hips and a fine, wet cunt. Stuff no one should ever say about a woman.

Carl plopped in a chair beside Rick while Daryl stretched, murmured something about going out to help T-Dog keep guard, and a few of the women drifted off into the kitchen to start to cook. Dale sat with Andrea, woke her up every fifteen to twenty minutes, made her recite her ABCs. Glenn stayed in the parlor for awhile.

But he couldn't get himself to settle and as the sun sunk low and everyone came back into the house, too scared to be outside for the night, so he went down to use the bathroom and get away.

He was splashing water onto his face, letting it run down his neck, when he heard the door to the bedroom across the hall open, the one Shane was in, and he twisted the faucets shut. He almost had the door open, a hairline crack just wide enough for him to peep through, when he heard footsteps coming down the hallway, and Rick's back blocked the entrance to the door.

"How is he?" Rick's voice was composed, none of that desperate edge Glenn remembered with Carl, and Glenn thought it was because Rick had practice now. Practice trying to reign himself in control.

"He'll be fine. The stab wound was shallow. It should have killed him, but it looks like he had a metal plate put in his collarbone. Knife couldn't pierce the steel."

Glenn listened to Rick let out a breath.

"His other injuries?"

"He's bruised up something awful. Got a broken cheekbone, gash across his forehead was superficial, I cleaned it up. His nose is broken, had to set it. It should heal up, though I can't say if it'll look the same once the swelling goes down." Herschel paused. "He has a concussion, possibly swelling in the brain, though I doubt it, but we can't know that know without a head CT." Glenn wasn't sure, wasn't a doctor, not even close, but it sounded like pretty good news to him. Good as could be expected.

"What about—" Rick's voice cut off like he couldn't even bring himself to say it.

"Eight stitches," Herschel said, and Glenn didn't get it why Shane would need those. "The antibiotics we're giving him should work against most venereal disease."

Glenn felt his stomach drop, hot and messy, almost as though it had flopped out onto his shoes. _Venereal disease_, that meant, well, it meant a lot of things. It meant that Garth and his friends, when they couldn't get Lori or Maggie or Andrea or Carol, it meant they'd had to make do. He wondered what kind of terrible stuff they'd had to say about that.

"Is he awake?"

Glenn closed his hand tighter around the doorknob. Rick sounded a lot like how Glenn felt, except Rick had to feel it even deeper, because Shane was his best friend. Glenn tried to think how he would feel if it had happened to Maggie, the person he was closest to, even if it was in a different way, and he shut his eyes against the thought.

"No. I don't think he'll be alert until sometime tomorrow afternoon."

Glenn waited until the sound of Rick and Herschel's footsteps retreated, and the bedroom door creaked shut. He stepped out into the hallway, hidden in the shadow, and Maggie was leaning with her back against the wall. Her head was tipped toward the floorboards, arms crossed over her chest.

"Maggie," he said, but then he saw her face, and it was so full of terror, so full of dark.

He opened his arms.


	3. Chapter 3

I do not own the characters featured in this story.

* * *

It was past noon the next day before Herschel sent Maggie to get him. Rick had wanted to ask about Shane before, but Sophia was still out there somewhere, and they still had to look, no matter how long it had been. Kids were tough, and kids were resilient, and it was his fault she was lost in the first place, just like this other mess was his fault too. Andrea, laid up with her head injury, sleeping and woozy, Lori, uncharacteristically quiet like she was carrying an added weight. Rick didn't know what to do.

"He's awake," Maggie said to him and he headed up to the house fast as he could move after he made a quick stop at his tent.

Shane was flat on his stomach, arms tucked under the pillow beneath his head. His naked back rose, fell, and there were dots of purple between his shoulder blades, finger prints from where someone had dug their hands in and pressed to keep Shane from moving. Fighting.

"Brought you some clothes," Rick said, and like a peace offering, held them out. His olive branch. T-shirt and cargo pants to reassure Shane in the continuity of the world after the flood.

"Thanks." Shane kept his eyes closed, maybe because he could barely open them due to the swelling, maybe because he was afraid of what he'd see."Andrea and Lori okay?"

"Fine. But they wouldn't be if it hadn't been for you." Shane had saved Lori twice, once from the walkers, and once from something worse.

Shane shifted, rustle on the sheets. The left side of his face was worse than before, purple and black and yellow just around the edges, a bruise that spread like water, fanned out till it faded away. "You," he said, wasn't sure_ how_ to say it. Things weren't like before. He couldn't ask Shane anything and expect an answer. He couldn't expect Shane to want to talk about this. "What happened after the field?"

Shane opened his left eye, far as he could, barely enough to squint, and he had one hell of a shiner. Rick hadn't seen Shane this beat up in a long time. Not since they were kids and Shane was stupid, always the first to throw a punch.

"I shot, shit; I think his name was Kurt. Kirk, maybe? Fuckin' Spock, man, I dunno, one of them." Shane's words were slurred, malformed, like his mouth was stuffed with cotton. His broken jaw couldn't make the sounds. "I only had five rounds, I was just going to go for it, you know, see if I had enough time after to get out my Glock after. One of the assholes got me in the balls, can you believe that? Fought _dirty_." Shane waited, expecting Rick to laugh, but continued after long seconds of silence. "Got me in the collarbone while I was down. Woulda severed my windpipe, s'what he was aiming for, but I bit him. He started it, so oh hell yeah, I was gonna play on his level. Hurt like a bitch, he kept trying to shove it in deeper." Shane shrugged, turned over more onto his side. Rick could see the bandage on his collarbone now, square of white dotted faded brown. "Then they dragged me off. I wasn't sure what they were doing at first, figured they would just shoot me right there, but then one of 'em, the big one, started talking about making a trade. Me for Andrea. Said he wanted a blonde." Shane pulled the sheets up a little higher, past his ribs. He didn't do it quick enough to hide the bruising. "I told him he was dumb as shit if he thought any of us would go along with that." Shane blinked, slow, and Rick knew that he was going to say it. That this was the part of the story he didn't want to hear.

"And?" He didn't want to push, but sometimes Shane was the kind of man who needed pushing to get him to cross over that edge. Sometimes Rick had to be the one to make Shane follow.

"Lost consciousness, I think. Got clocked with a rifle in the face. Next thing I know, I'm here, feeling like someone kicked out my teeth." Rick watched him. Shane's expression was open, as much as Rick could tell, genuine, but Shane was always clouded, and these days Rick could only guess what was going on with him. But this was, seemed like, the Shane he knew better than anyone, and if he hadn't stopped believing God was real when Carl took a bullet to the stomach, he'd have called it a miracle.

Shane didn't have memory of it. He didn't know. He'd have to, eventually, when he was up and ambulatory again. But it would be best, Rick thought, for now, to drop it and let Shane be. Give him some time to recover. It wasn't lying.

Rick honestly just didn't know what to say. How was he supposed to work it into conversation?

"They left your teeth intact, luckily. I don't think Herschel doubles as a dentist." He reached out, gently put his hand to the side of Shane's shaved head, felt the bare curve of his skull against his palm.

Shane flinched when he touched him, jerked away.

"Pretty sure I hit my head on ground," Shane said, an explanation, and Rick took his hand away. "Right now, there's not a part of me that doesn't hurt."

"Sorry."

"Nah, I been hurt worse than this. Remember that time the Kachinsky brothers laid into me? Yeah, that was worse." Shane laughed, wincing at pain or the memory, Rick didn't know which. He did remember what Shane was talking about, though, way back in high school, when Shane had spent a good week of their summer laid up in his bedroom, black eyes and a busted lip and ribs he'd had to keep wrapped.

"You did have sex with their baby sister."

"And she was willing. And sixteen. And I told you I wasn't the father of her baby." Rick chuckled a little at that. High school felt like someone else's life. Like another Rick and Shane had existed, unconnected to the men they'd become now.

He was overcome with a sensation, something in his stomach. It was like ice in his bones to know that he was going to have to come back in here and ruin this, ruin Shane. He'd have to give Shane the news that would take away a part of himself; security and strength. Rick's saliva tasted bitter and he had to get up. He couldn't stay in that room another second. He needed to go out and think.

"I'll send in Lori with some water for you. You probably want to wash some of that blood off your face."

Shane nodded and settled on his chest again, leaned into the pillow. The pillowcase had smears of blood. Shane's wounds hadn't been fatal, or even life threatening, but they'd been messy. "Get some rest."


	4. Chapter 4

I do not own the characters featured in this story.

* * *

Lori leaned against the kitchen counter while Patricia ladled hot water into a metal basin. Patricia was silent, eyes glossy. She looked like she was somewhere far away. Wherever she was, Lori wished she could be there with her. Anywhere but here, waiting to take Shane in some water to use to clean himself up after being raped.

Rick hadn't told her, not directly, but she had known the second she'd seen Shane was still alive. Animals like the ones who had wanted to take her and the other women; they left survivors for a reason. They left him because to live after some things was even worse than it was to die. They left Shane because after they'd had their fun they had no incentive to kill him.

"There you go." Patricia handed her the small tub. "You should tell him to give it a few minutes to cool."

She bobbed her head and tiptoed toward the bedroom, unsure of what she'd see. She'd seen the injuries already, what she hadn't seen was how Shane was. After the CDC, she'd been left shaking and crying, and it had taken her a few hours to pull it together. She wondered if Shane would be nearly as upset or if he'd shrug it off, unfazed, his humanity too far gone to be affected by things like that.

She rapped on the doorknob to let him know she was coming in.

He was already up. He'd been expecting her and she looked to see if his eyes were shiny or wet. The eye that was open was dry, but haunted, and she was afraid to stare into it. She didn't want to see. She had images in her head already.

"Bet you think I deserve this," Shane said, sitting awkwardly, knees spread, most of weight on his feet, leaning forward, sheet twisted up around his lap. There was something mean to his voice, the curl of his mouth, but it wasn't directed at her. He kept his head titled down.

"No one deserves this." She thought, had always told herself, that this much was true. No one deserved this. That was what she had said, debating the death penalty and eye-for-an-eye with her friends around a kitchen table, cup of coffee cooling in her hands. No one deserved _this_. But she saw the world different now, sharper, clearer, without the filtered, rose-colored screen. She saw the horror and the ugly and the hurt. She'd lived through it. And she remembered those men who had tried to get their hands on her, and she remembered Shane cocking his shotgun, and she remembered screaming at him to pull the trigger, to blow all their heads away while Andrea bled into her lap.

"But if anyone did?" he asked, sounding like a child, soft-lipped and open-mouthed.

"It'd be you," she told him, honest, with Shane and herself. It would be him; her husband's best friend since childhood. The man who loved her and hurt her and fucked everything in her life right up. The man she'd, for a while, wished was dead until he had saved her child, until she realized his worth in protecting her son.

"I didn't," he said, lifting his face to her. His broken, smashed in face. One of his eyes completely swollen shut. He looked puffy and aching and raw and she bet it hurt, throbbed with his heartbeat, stung to every touch.

"Would you have?" She set the basin of water in front of him, made him meet her eyes. She wanted to know. He'd so far managed to skirt around it, apologize in the briefest way. He'd apologized so he wouldn't have to think about it. "If I hadn't stopped you?"

He reached his hands down into the basin, picked up the washcloth.

"I don't know," he said, eventually, and wrung the excess water out. "I don't want to think so."

"Well." She watched him move the cloth to his face, gingerly start to wipe the dried blood away. The skin was no cleaner underneath, dark and purple. "I'm going to need more certainty than that."

Shane didn't answer. He continued dabbing at his face, hissing when he touched a sore spot. He wasn't getting anything done. She reached out and took the washcloth away from him, went to cleaning his face herself, fast and efficient. She didn't care if it hurt. She started to work down his neck and his shoulders, clear away the grit, not looking at him, pretending this was Rick or Glenn or anyone but Shane. She stopped, however, when she let her gaze drift downwards, unintentionally into his lap.

Shane had a bite mark on the part of his thigh that she could see. Deep and red and hard enough to have broken the skin. Shane heard her gasp, quickly pulled the sheet over it, skin from the chin up that wasn't bruised flushing red.

Impulsively, because she had loved the Shane she knew in the world, the Shane who made her laugh and smile, who made Rick smile, who would play with Carl in the backyard and pull up a plate at dinner, she leaned forward and kissed his battered cheek. She had loved the Shane who had protected her and Carl like they were his. And she felt bad for this Shane, even though she probably shouldn't. This Shane who did things and then tried to justify them, who was going a little crazy, maybe, or who had always been this dark and was just starting to show it. But he was also vulnerable, and his hands were trembling, and he had fingerprints on his hips and shoulder blades, and he had them because he'd done what he always, always said he'd do.

Protect her. Carl. Keep them safe.

Shane's skin was hot against her lips. She hoped he wasn't about to catch a fever. It would worry Rick and Carl half to death.

"Thank you," she whispered, and it felt real, the way the sincerity of the words swelled to fill her heart and chest.

"Anything for you," he said and it scared her, because she knew he meant it, because this had happened to him and she wondered what worse he'd do or have done to him all out of his love for Carl and her. She didn't want to give him a chance to say more, so she spun on her heel and left the room.

She found Rick in their tent, sitting cross legged on the nest of their sleeping bags. His eyes were open and his face blank, thoughtful. She knew even before he spoke what is words would be.

"How does he seem to you?"

She wasn't sure if she was supposed to tell him the truth. Rick didn't know the things she did. He didn't know the same Shane. Whatever she told Rick would only break him up, make him feel guilty. Rick felt things deeper than most; put more weight on himself than he should. Some people, like Shane, just weren't his responsibility.

After careful consideration, she decided to lie. She'd told him about Shane and the baby, one little secret wouldn't hurt.

"No different than usual."

Rick nodded like she'd given him confirmation.

"He doesn't remember," Rick said, hands closing into fists in his lap. "He doesn't know."

It took her a moment to understand what he meant. And it made sense. She and Shane were both partial to lies over the truth. It was the single thing they had in common.

"He doesn't?" She tried to sound surprised, forced herself to suck in a breath. She wondered why Shane had bothered to tell her, of all people, but then she realized it was his way to show he was sorry, his way to show her how much he cared. It was his _look what I would go through for you_ and it made her want to thank him again and spit in his face. It felt like she was being manipulated. Like he was trying to guilt her into loving him, only she couldn't see anyone making the conscious choice, and if she had to, she would wish it on him before she'd wish it on herself. She'd have begged him to take it for her, would have promised him almost anything she had to give.

"He was unconscious. They knocked him out before they started, so he doesn't know. And I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to tell him." There it was, that anger toward Shane again, reignited with a vengeance, blazing like the infernos of hell. How dare he put something like that on Rick. But she also saw things from Shane's perspective, couldn't think of a single man who would openly admit to something that came with so much pain and shame. Of course he wanted to pretend like it had never happened. Of course he didn't think Rick would feel the need to bring it up.

"You don't have to." Rick's head snapped up and he stared at her. "Get Herschel to do it or Maggie or Patricia or Glenn, if he knows, if any of them do. Don't put it on yourself. Maybe Shane doesn't even need to know. Why tell him something that is only going to hurt him?"

"I have to, Lori."

"Not right now. Wait a while. He could remember on his own if you give a few days. Think about it."

Rick's face was a mask, but she could still read it. She'd always been able to. He was beating himself up. He blamed himself, because he was Rick fucking Grimes, master of the martyr complex, and she wouldn't have it, not this time.

"It's not your fault. Shane's a big boy, Rick. He made his choices. And what he does is not your _fault_."

"That's not it." Rick said and he almost sounded angry. "I don't—" His composure got closer and closer to cracking. "I feel guilty because I'm glad it wasn't you. I'm so glad it wasn't you." He pulled her to him, buried his face in her neck. That was the one thing she hadn't been expecting. But she was glad for it too. "Christ, he's my best friend and the first thing I thought when I found out was _thank God it's not Lori_. It would have been him or you and I'm relieved things turned out the way they did."

"I know," she murmured, hushing him, smoothing her nails across his scalp. She rested her cheek against the top of his head, pulled his ear lower; let him listen to her heart. "I'm glad it wasn't me too."

"What kind of man does that _make_ me?" The words were muffled into her chest, lost in the fabric of her shirt. She could feel the heat and the wet of his breath.

"A normal one," she said, trying to think of a better word for it. "A man who loves his family, and there's nothing bad or wrong with that."


	5. Chapter 5

I do not own the characters featured here.

* * *

Carl didn't know what was going on because he was twelve and no one ever told him anything, not even when they should.

His mom sat beside him around the campfire, peeling the skin off a peach careful and slow. He knew something was wrong because his mom didn't do things like that. When he'd been small and all the other moms had peeled the skin off his friends' apple slices, his mom had sat there and made him eat his whole, red or green or yellow on the outside still attached. She'd made him eat the crusts of his sandwiches too. Said it would help him grow big and strong like his dad.

"What're you doing?" he asked her, watched her wipe the knife she was using to peel against her leg. Then she started to cut the peach into pieces that she put on a plate and mashed with a fork.

"I," she paused, looked at him, that kind of stare she got when she was considering lying. The one he knew. The one that meant she wasn't sure he could handle the truth. But he was braver now than he used to be. He'd started to grow up. "I'm making Shane his dinner," she said after a moment, grinding the peach into the bottom of the plate with that fork, mushing it smooth and goopy.

"It looks like baby food." He didn't know why Shane would want to eat that. It looked gross, like orange guts. Most of the time everything looked like blood or guts, everything but the things that were supposed to. Real blood and guts were just normal, red and gray and rotten.

"Shane hurt his jaw, baby." Mom pat him on the head, reached past him to crack two eggs onto the skillet over the fire. The eggs hissed and popped. "He's going to have trouble chewing for the next week or so. Remember when that boy on your baseball team got hit in the face and couldn't eat solids after? It's like that."

Carl remembered Robbie and the grounder that had jumped up out of the dust and gotten him in the face. Robbie had cried and bled all down the front of his shirt, caught blood and teeth in his mitt. When he'd seen Robbie at school a few days later he couldn't open his mouth and he had talked funny. But Robbie hadn't looked like Shane. He'd seen Shane when his dad had brought him in. Shane was hurt worse than a broken jaw. Shane looked like he'd gotten in a fight and lost.

"Can I take his food to him?"

Mom started to give him another look, the _I don't think that's a good idea_ one, so he kept going. "When I was hurt you stayed with me. I want to stay with Shane."

Across from him, his dad put his hands on his knees and leaned forward.

"I'm not sure Shane's in the mood for visitors right now, Carl." His dad looked tired. He had shadows in his face, beneath his skin it seemed like.

"I could at least ask him." Shane never sent him away, except for once, when they were all worried about Sophia. Shane wouldn't mind this time.

"You go on and ask him, then." Mom slid the eggs onto the plate; put the plate in his hands. Carl stared down at Shane's dinner. Two scrambled eggs and smushed up peach. He felt sorry for Shane.

Shane was sitting up in bed, wearing his green pants and his dark blue shirt, buttoned up far as it would go. He looked worse than he had yesterday, more swollen and bruised. He looked sadder, too. Shane almost looked like he could cry. Carl didn't even think that Shane knew how to cry.

"I brought you your dinner." He held the food out, feeling sorry again. He'd had grilled something, chicken or squirrel or opossum, and potatoes to eat, a crunchy peach for dessert. Shane didn't get anything near as good as that.

"Thanks little man." Shane took it from him, picked up the fork and dug in. He ate slow, opened his mouth just enough to get the little bits of egg in. He ignored the peach. Carl wouldn't have eaten it either. It seemed wrong to try to give Shane something you fed to babies. "You doin' alright?"

"I guess. My mom's kinda shook up. Andrea's still hurt. My dad seems…different. No one tells me anything important. What happened yesterday? I want to know why those guys left and why they beat you up."

Shane kept his eyes on the floor. His fork shook in his hand, clattered loud when he dropped it onto the plate.

"That's stuff you don't need to know about. It's complicated. Even us adults don't really get it. As for me, I've got the habit of getting on people's nerves," Shane said it like a joke. Carl didn't feel like laughing. He shifted on his feet while Shane set the plate down on the nightstand by the bed, let out a long breath.

"Can I stay with you for awhile? I'll keep you company." He didn't want Shane to be alone while he was sick. He knew what Shane had done for him. His mom had told him, his dad too, and that was a lot to do for a person. And he'd do it for Shane if given the chance.

"Sure, bud," Shane said, smiling, arm over his eyes.

Carl went around to the other side of the bed. The few times he'd woken up, right after he'd first been shot, he'd seen his mom's face beside his on the pillow, her arm around his waist. It had made him feel safe to hear her breathing beside him and so he climbed up onto the side of the bed closest to the window and sat with his back against the headboard. It wasn't weird, not really. When he was a kid, a real kid, not like now, he'd stayed at Shane's house whenever his parents had to go somewhere and couldn't leave him with his grandparents. He'd had his own room at Shane's, with his own stuff and his own bed, but he had gotten scared at night without his parents, and Shane had always, after a little begging on Carl's part, let him climb into his bed. He just wasn't allowed to tell anyone about it after because mushy stuff like that was embarrassing when you didn't keep it between two people. Four and being scared of sleeping by himself was something that would have gotten him teased for life. He wondered if people would have teased Shane about letting scared little Carl sleep with him to keep nightmares away. Part of him wondered if Shane had been afraid to sleep alone then too.

He was quiet for a long time, hands folded in front of him, checking to see if Shane had fallen asleep. He wanted to think of something to say to make Shane feel better, only he couldn't. He kept wanting to ask about the bruises and blood and broken bones.

"Does it hurt?" He didn't know why he said what he did. He guessed he wanted Shane to say that it didn't, that he'd be fine, that it was nothing, like always. He'd thought Shane was the toughest guy he knew, even more than his dad. Because Shane was the one who went into dangerous situations and never got hurt. Carl and his dad could get hit with things and live through them, but Shane never needed to find that strength. He used to think Shane could walk on glass without getting cut.

"Little bit." Shane moved his arm, kept his eyes shut. "Ever had a toothache?"

Carl shook his head. Shane spoke again at the silence.

"A real nasty splinter?"

"Yeah."

"It's a bit like that. Not bad but you always know it's there. You can feel it when your heart beats. Nothing like what you went through, though."

It looked just as bad. Worse. His mom hadn't let him look at his own wound until it was mostly starting to get better and Mr. Greene had stitched it up real clean and neat. Shane was a mess everywhere, all bruised and purple and colors Carl didn't know skin could be.

"Walk it off?" He suggested, half laughing, remembering what Shane had told him when he had fallen off his bike at the park. Walking off the scrape had worked back then.

"Yeah." Shane laughed too, hard enough his mouth twisted, that he brought a hand up to touch his rib. "I'll give that a try tomorrow."

He tried to smile because inside he felt like crying and he didn't understand it. It just hurt, was all. Now that Sophia, smart and funny and pretty Sophia, was gone, Shane was his best friend. His best friend and his uncle and his big brother and kind of a dad, too, only Carl had a dad, the best dad, and it was mean to put Shane up in his dad's place too. That's why dad could be his dad and Shane could be Carl's best friend.

There were tears in his eyes and his throat felt heavy like he was trying to swallow peanut butter. He was such a baby, being upset when things were getting better, when Shane was okay.

"Hey," Shane said, sharp, and Carl blinked fast, heaviness in his throat. "You start up with the water works on me and Imma make you leave. Got that? Nothing to cry 'bout here." Shane sat up higher, put his whole hand on the top of Carl's head. It was warm and Shane ran his fingers quickly through his hair.

"Sorry." He wiped his nose, held his breath until he felt like he could talk again.

"I ever tell you 'bout the time me and your daddy caught our first burglar?"

He shook his head no. He'd heard the story before, a dozen times, but always from his dad. His dad told things one way, more for kids. Dad held stuff back and when he talked about it, he made it seem like it was something way off, something that had happened to another person. When Shane told things they seemed more realistic, less like fairy tales, like Shane was reliving it all again. "It was by accident. Don't ever let your dad tell you different. It was eight on Saturday night and we had about an hour left of our shift when we got a call about a drunk out pissing on the playground."

Carl wanted to listen, did his best. But the room was quiet and it was getting late and the air was finally starting to cool. He drifted off, in and out, tried hard to keep his eyes open long enough to hear the punch line, to hear Shane tell about how they caught the guy coming out of the elementary school with TVs stacked on the janitor's cart, ski mask on despite the late July heat.

He fell asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

I don't own the characters here.

This chapter is a bit more graphic than the others. But it's not too bad.

* * *

Carl whimpered in his sleep. Tiny sounds, helpless, desperate, little noises from between his teeth. Shane sat up in the dark, reflection of the high, white moon in the bedroom mirror, and put a hand on Carl's head. Carl's hair was sweaty, sticky, and he ran his fingers through it, over and over, did his best to brush the bad dreams away.

He remembered nights Lori and Rick would drop Carl off at his house. He'd been happy then, happy to give them an evening off, happy to spend some quality time with his little man. The kid he breathed for. He'd looked forward to it. To that one Saturday a month when Carl came over and they ordered pizza, went out for Chinese, or stayed in the back yard, Carl helping him cook something on the grill. He'd fixed up his guest bedroom, made it Carl's bedroom, but Carl never slept in it past midnight. Shane would hear the bedroom door creak open, hear the footsteps padding down the hall. He'd hear Carl sniffle before he felt fingers prod at his face, his eyes, Carl's voice asking him if he was awake.

"No," he'd say, always, and roll over, make room for Carl to slide in. He'd been able to keep away the bad things then. Just his presence had been enough. It took more now. Took blood and determination and guns. Took losing pieces of yourself you could never get back. Took the pieces you were better off without because they made you weak.

His second morning since and the sun was too bright. It slanted golden through the blinds. His one good eye could barely make sense of it. Overload, he knew, and the pain in his head was sharp, stabbing, and everywhere he felt a heartbeat, one long, pulsing ache. He'd lied to Rick when he said he'd hurt worse than this. But lying to Rick had become a defense mechanism and a force of habit. Lies made it easier to keep the peace. Kind of like how you never told your woman she looked fat, even if she did, because you'd be on the living room couch for a week. You grit your teeth and smiled.

Carl shifted beside him, opened one eye and squinted.

"You alright, Shane?" Carl was such a good boy. Shane couldn't believe he'd almost lost him, that he'd almost made the wrong choice. Here, Carl blinking back the sun, shooting Otis seemed like the best decision of his life.

"Yeah." He put his hand on Carl's head again. "Just gettin' up to take a shower. Go back to sleep." Carl nodded at him, already halfway conked out.

The birds were just starting to sing. It was no earlier than five thirty in the morning. Shane wanted to sleep himself but wasn't sure he could do it. He wasn't willing to face the dreams.

He moved fast as he could to the bathroom. Walking was worse than standing, pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, careful not to move the broken bones in his jaw, kept air in his chest, went toward his target. He locked the door behind him and stood over the sink, his hands trembling, and the warm trickle he'd felt on the inside of his leg spotted red on the floor. The blood was thin and skiddy, dark, dark red. It was nothing a little bit of wadded up toilet paper couldn't handle. It was nothing he couldn't get out of his pants with bleach.

Steam filled the bathroom while he undressed. Shane took his clothes off careful, slow. Shirt was the first to go, just had to undo the buttons, but the pants were harder, and it took him near five minutes to shake them loose. Finally naked, he limped his way to the shower, kept his head down, avoided the mirror.

He knew what he'd see.

The water that ran off him swirled around the drain pink. He watched, waited, until it finally ran clear. He felt a strange sense of calm within himself as he reached for the soap, worked it into a lather, scrubbed the roughness of his shaved head. Neck, chest, and shoulders, abdominals and back. He tried to avoid the sore spots but his whole torso was a bruise. Next were the thighs. He tipped his head up, used the wash cloth this time, felt nothing beneath his fingers but the texture of the fabric and didn't look. He knew what was there, how it had come to be, and he didn't need to look for confirmation.

"I came to check on Carl." Lori flicked her eyes across him when she opened the door to the bedroom without knocking, Shane out of the shower. She tried to hide it, tried to be discreet, but she didn't know how to hide the emotions on her face. "I brought you some clothes too."

He considered dropping his towel. It was nothing she hadn't seen. Except for how now it was everything she hadn't seen. She'd been with him before the bruises, before the bites, before the stitches that kept together what had been torn in two. Lori wasn't strong enough to handle the sight. He was the only one who could take it.

"He's asleep."

"Did you say anything to him?"

"Never," he said, meant it. He'd keep everything bad from that child. He'd never let him know that his life, his happiness, the thing he called a family, was all forged on the death and pain of someone else. First Otis, now Shane. It was fitting. He'd avoided the fire only to be dragged back through the flames, some twisted retribution. He thought Otis would be happy to hear it. "Thank you," he took the clothes from her, shirt and pants, socks and his boots.

Dressed, he decided to get it over with. He had to face the group, couldn't hide it, couldn't let them think anything was wrong. He was fine.

There were things to see to. There was a search for a little girl that needed to be called off. Searching had gotten them nowhere. Searching had been what led them to Garth.

Lori ambushed him on the porch. Satisfied with how he'd treated Carl, she looked ready to fight.

"You lied to Rick." Lori's breath was hot on his face. She pressed an accusing finger to his chest, jammed it right into a bruise. Someone, he couldn't remember, didn't want to, had put a knee there, used it to press him down. "You said you didn't remember. You said you didn't know."

"You surprised by that?" he asked her. What he wanted to say was _of course I fucking did_. He didn't get why she expected anything different from him. Of _course_ he'd lied about this. Would have lied to her too if it hadn't been for what happened between them, if he still didn't feel so terrible about it, if he didn't love her more than himself.

He held a breath and blew it out through his nose.

"You have to tell him. It's killing him, Shane. All this watching you and waiting and having to know." He wanted to tell her it wasn't about Rick. He wanted for her to care about him over Rick for once in her life. Rick wasn't the one who'd lived it. Rick didn't have the memories in his head, lurking, stretching, black like shadows in the night. Rick didn't blink and hear it, see it, feel it. Rick didn't move and bleed.

"He doesn't, Lori. He don't need the images in his head." The blood. The dirt in his face, in his teeth. The dry rattle of laughter. The force of the fingers that held him still, open like he'd never been in his life. Shane put a hand out and tried to keep the world from spinning, clutched at air.

"You think he doesn't have images in his head already?" Lori put her hands on her hips and lowered her voice. The sun was framed high behind her. The sky was clear and blue. Shane wanted to laugh but he knew it'd frighten her. It frightened him, the heat and heavy in his chest. It felt like his bones were burning.

"Rick ain't dark enough to think that shit up. Not even on his most creative day." Lori looked up at him, something sad showing in her face. It had been a while since she'd looked at him in anything other than anger, disgust, distant pity. "Them trying to see how many could fit—" His voice trembled, broke, and he had to hold his breath again because he was so goddamn weak. Lori's eyes went wide, round like marbles, rocks filed smooth. She brought a hand up to cover her mouth. For a minute he thought she was going to vomit. He thought he might too. The bile swelled until he found the force to swallow it.

She didn't fucking _know_. Things like that, the things that he'd done and had done to him, the sharp and stinging things, were better left not talked about.

He smelled the sweat and could taste the blood.

"Rick," he said, regaining his composure, cooling, fast like a pot of water taken off the fire. Cop mode. Collected and even. That was what he wanted to be. He couldn't handle all the feelings. "He wouldn't be able to stand it. We both know he'd blame himself." It was easier to talk about it like this. To put it in terms of Rick and keep it out of terms of Shane. Detachment and distance. That was how it needed to be for him to get through it, to come out intact. He felt like there were cracks inside him. Just a day or two and the cracks would seal. "Rick feels things deeper than he should."

"It's one of the reasons I love him."

It was one of the reasons Shane loved him too. Rick felt honest empathy for him, even after all the things he didn't know Shane had done.

"I won't tell him." He tasted blood and spit.

"Shane," she put her hand on him again, softer, gentle, like she had before any of this had happened, before Rick had come back from the dead. He wouldn't take her fake affection. He wouldn't let her pretend to love him to get him to talk to Rick. "It's not healthy to keep things in."

He had Otis inside his head already. He could take Garth and his friends and put them there too. He could put the whole world in there and manage to bear it.

"Far as I'm concerned," he hitched his belt higher, took a step. "Nothing happened."


	7. Chapter 7

I do not own the characters featured here.

* * *

Rick found Shane and Lori standing on Hershel's porch. Shane, stern gaze, eyes empty, watching the horizon, hand resting on his gun, weight on one of the support beams. The wood under Shane's boots creaked. Lori, arms around herself, their baby, and it was peaceful, the two of them and the stillness in the air.

"It's good to see you up." That was the truth. To see Shane walking, standing, even with that drag in his leg, that unnatural limp, it was better, safer. It helped Rick to breathe. He remembered Shane face down, unmoving, blood and sweat and dirt. He felt his heart swing into his throat.

"You know me." Shane smiled, grimaced, smiled again. Shane was careful not to use his teeth, talked with his tongue and his lips, minimal jaw movement. "Nothing's gonna keep me down for long."

Down. Rick blinked. Image of the fingerprints on Shane's back, the hands that had pressed them in. Christ. He had to tell Shane before it destroyed them both. Shane had to know, deep down, had to feel the tension, thick like molasses, just as dark.

He looked around for Carl. Hadn't seen him since the night before, when he'd gone off, plate in hand, hat on his head, wide eyed and hopeful. Like he was playing doctor. Like he'd mend Shane up with love.

"Where's Carl?"

"Sleepin'." Shane jerked a thumb toward the house. "Little man crashed hard last night. Snores something awful, you know. Never knew a twelve year old that snored like that."

"He gets it from Lori," Rick said, grinning honest, first time in days, and Lori smacked him hard on the back, open palm. Shane laughed, a little, too.

"I'm gonna go help Carol with breakfast." Lori excused herself, scooted around them, didn't touch Shane, wouldn't look at him, and Rick wondered if that was because of him. If it was because he knew. Lori didn't have anything to feel bad about. He understood the way things were and how they had to be. They'd thought he was dead when it was said and done.

Side by side in silence. He and Shane watched the treeline together, boughs and branches, rustling leaves, canopy of green that loomed, threatening and omnipresent. Not for the first time, Rick thought about Sophia out there. Alone and wandering helplessly, soaked up to the knees from the stream, dirt smudged across both cheeks. He'd left her and he'd been distracted by Shane and by Lori and he knew she was waiting for someone to finally bring her home.

"Andrea and I are going out to look for Sophia soon as we eat."

Shane didn't answer, but Rick saw his hands clench into fists. Shane's fingers trembled.

"You're still goin' on 'bout that?" Shane's voice was ragged and Rick could hear the anger behind it, all the things Shane was barely holding in. Shane had never been one to keep composed under pressure. "You're really gonna take Andrea and go out there? Keep up this pointless search? Rick, man, it's been more than a week."

It hurt him that Shane had become so hopeless, that this life had robbed Shane of empathy. Sophia was a lost and frightened little girl. He thought, of anyone, that Shane would understand.

"I know we're going to find her."

"Yeah," Shane laughed and this time the sound was dry, empty. The sound a corpse might make. "Worked so well the last time. You're just puttin' us in danger. Look at what happened. You went out lookin' and you found Garth and his fuckin' friends. And they almost killed us all, almost—" Shane paused. Rick watched Shane flex his fingers until they stopped shaking. Shane who was so full of rage. "They almost raped Lori and Andrea. They beat the shit out of me."

More than that, Rick wanted to tell him. Worse than that. And it was the perfect moment, the opportunity he'd been waiting for. He opened his mouth, ready to say it, let the floodgates burst and the truth spill, rise high until Shane drowned in it, learned to swim, but the look Shane gave him, brown eyes and battered and a twist to his mouth Rick recognized, hadn't seen in years. Shane was scared, for everyone, Carl and Rick and Lori and Andrea and himself. Rick couldn't do it to him. Couldn't give him one more thing to add to his list.

"Sophia's dead, Rick. She's dead."

"You're wrong," was all he said, the only way he could put it. Wrong about everything.

He walked away and Shane didn't join him, limped a slow and careful path back into the house.

When Rick returned later, hours later, sun setting off in the distance, a whole day out scouring the valley, calling Sophia's name, not a trace of her, that little girl, Shane was away from everyone, back against a tree. He was taking his gun apart, piece by piece, oiling it, and he looked like himself, briefly, just a bit worse for the wear.

Shane didn't join them for dinner. He kept to himself still, went through every single gun they owned. Cleaned the barrels, counted the bullets, organized them by size and type and weight. He looked over, once, and Rick noticed Glenn turn his face away. Red faced and guilty eyed. Rick would have to ask him about that sometime. In the morning, maybe. The sun had set and camp was quiet and Carl was yawning, alternating between Shane and the rest of them, asking questions, listening while Shane told him about the guns.

The group dispersed a little after eight. Dale went off into his camper, sat on the roof with his rifle across his lap. He read a paperback by flashlight. Andrea went over to Shane, said something, thank you, Rick thought, and she kissed his cheek, right there in front of everybody. They could be good together if Shane would give her a chance. Carol, gaunt faced and grief ridden, teary, walked briskly back to her tent. Daryl cast her a lingering glance before he went the other way. Lori went to Carl, put her hands on his back and guided him up, off toward bed. Everyone gone, Shane made his way over and prodded at the embers, put in a few fresh sticks of wood.

Rick didn't know how to bring Shane out of the shadows. Half of Shane's face hidden in the darkness, flicker of the fire, bruised and swollen and cold.

"Aren't you going to go to bed?" He asked, crouched at Shane's right, hand on Shane's shoulder. He was careful not to squeeze. He felt the tension there, the blood and the bone, knots of muscle.

"Nah, man." Shane shook his head, mouth wet and red. It looked like he'd been chewing on it, licked his lips until they'd cracked. "Promised Andrea I'd take the first watch."

"Okay," he said, and he kept the questions to himself, the suggestions Shane would shake off, shake away. Shane had never known when to stop and rest. He pushed himself, far and fast and hard as his endurance could go. Rick remembered, particularly rough day on the job, twenty-two and rookies, Shane tore a ligament tackling a mugger through a picket fence. Arm in a sling, sixteen hours later, Shane was back at the station house, trying to convince the captain to reduce his one week medical leave. "See you in the morning."

"Night," Shane whispered, wouldn't look at him. Hadn't for days. Rick wanted to ask if Shane blamed him, if he'd feel the same after, that terrible moment when he had to take Shane aside and tell him what he knew. He wondered what Shane's reaction would be and he couldn't picture it.

The Shane Rick used to know felt like a ghost inside his head.

Lori was waiting for him in their tent. She was wearing one of his old shirts, worn in places, letters faded, old police academy logo. It had lost its shape years ago, shrunk some disastrous day in the wash, and it stopped just above the tops of Lori's thighs. He moved to her and looked for a curving in her belly. Not quite yet.

"I'm worried about Shane," he told her, felt guilty for it. Last few days all he could talk about was Shane. Shane and that tender, aching burn. That prick of failure. The knowledge that it was entirely his fault.

Lori pressed herself to his back, lean line of her body, softness of her belly and her breasts. Her arms fit all the way around him, palms centered above his heart. He closed his eyes, for a moment, and let Lori feel its beating, the rush of blood that flowed through him, toes to fingertips to chest.

Lori's mouth was warm against his ear.

"Don't be," she said, low whisper, exhalation of breath. She hugged him tighter, braced him against herself.

"How can you say that? Shane—he protected you, Andrea. He needs…" Distance. Understanding. Friendship. Rick didn't really know. But he wanted to. He wanted to be there to offer it all.

"He knows, Rick," Lori said it cautious, darkly. She said it the same as she'd told him the news before, about the baby and about Shane. The first news that nearly broke him. The news that made him want to dislodge Shane's teeth. The news he'd accepted, in the end, understood, because it had been about comfort between two people, affection and solace in a land of the dead. "He lied to you."

Lori kissed the back of his neck.

"Shane remembers everything."


	8. Chapter 8

I do not own the characters featured here.

* * *

Glenn was reeling, pent up and lost inside. There was so much going on in his life, in the day to day, and he didn't know how Rick and everyone else managed to keep it in. He thought he was going to explode, splatter wet chunks of himself all over the ground like he was in an old science fiction movie. His heart felt less like a muscle and more like a grenade.

Maggie and the secret her father was keeping. Glenn had seen them, those walkers in the barn. He thought they could go to the loft and lay there, kiss and cuddle and talk, have sex if she was willing, but he wasn't sure he could go through with it, not after Shane. Maggie'd had a close call herself, had almost been chosen over Andrea, had only gotten out of it because Shane had distracted the group long enough for Maggie and Patricia and Beth to huddle in the hidden compartment beneath the stairs.

Maggie and the things she knew. Maggie who knew about Shane because her father had told her, had told her about the stitches and the bruises and the blood. Maggie who had told him everything, curled in his arms, sobbing. She'd wet the front of his shirt and clung to him, desperately, both hands fisted in his shirt. And he'd held her, shushed her, stroked her hair and promised everything would be okay. Said he'd never ever let anything happen to her. Swore he'd never let her end up like Shane.

He ran into Shane at the water pump. Shane was sitting, stiff and awkward, rubbing water across his hands. Shane was freshly showered, dressed in clothes Carol had washed for him, and Glenn didn't know what he was trying to scrub clean. Shane's fingers weren't dirty. Glenn watched him dip his hands into the bucket again and again.

"Be done in a second." Shane said it so casual, so normal, as if this had happened,back before the apocalypse had taken the world by storm.

He didn't know what he was supposed to do or say. There had been a girl in his high school, shy and quiet, pale faced, and everyone had known the things her step-father had done to her before foster care had taken her away. She'd kept to herself, mostly, and there had been one time at a dance, Glenn had found himself in her corner, sitting beside her in a chair, and he'd been cautious, soothing, and she'd practically slapped him in the face. She'd come to terms with it, she'd said. She'd told him she didn't need people trying to be gentle. Glenn wasn't so sure Shane would appreciate the more direct approach. But he needed to tell Shane he was sorry, needed to thank him, couldn't change the things he didn't know how to feel.

"No worries." He was no good at anything when he was nervous. He danced in place, twitching, shifted his weight. He crushed new shoots of grass and crunched old leaves. Shane splashed water onto his neck, let it run, shining trickles, and asked

"There something you want to say to me?"

"Thank you." Shane raised an eyebrow; confused. "For protecting Maggie when I couldn't."

Shane tipped his head in confirmation.

"Really, Shane. I don't know what I would have done. You didn't just—not just for Lori and Andrea. All of us." He pictured what Maggie had told him. Shane, big and blocking the doorway, Maggie and Patricia and Beth fleeing deeper into the house, trying hard to get Lori and Andrea and Carl to go with them. He felt tears prickle hot on his cheeks. He wiped his face fast with the back of his hand. "It's so awful, everything that's happened."

"What're you getting at, man?" Shane asked, eyes crinkled, hand rubbing across his mouth. Shane knew he knew. Glenn could tell. Shane's eyes were wide and open, Shane was starting to stand up and step back. Shane put his chest out and made himself full height. Glenn thought it would be different, somehow, expected Shane to fold himself in. He hadn't thought Shane would get angry at him for trying to help. "What exactly do you think happened?"

"I know." He tried to put a hand on Shane's shoulder. Shane pushed him away. "I know that you were—" He thought Shane was going to hit him. The way Shane curled his hands into fists.

"Shut up Glenn." Shane worked his palms over his shaved head, forehead to the bottom of his skull.

"I could get you something. Anything you need. There's a bookstore near the pharmacy. There uh, might be something there about this." He tried to think of where to look. The self-help section, maybe. Autobiographies. There had to be fiction that focused on this sort of thing. He wished he could look it up on google. He'd be going into the store blind. Dale might know, he realized. Dale had read a lot of books. He'd go to town, he decided. He'd go in and find a book.

The expression Shane gave him was flat and deep and dull. Annoyance and underneath that tons of hurt.

"I don't need a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul. I need you to get out of my face. I need you to let me be. Stick to what you're good at. Go run errands for someone else." Lashing out; defensive. He knew Shane didn't mean the things he said. That was the worst part about it—that Shane thought he needed to protect himself from Glenn.

Shane wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. He hissed when his wrist bumped his swollen nose. Shane had bruises under his eyes from the fracture. He reminded Glenn of a raccoon.

"I'm trying to help you," he said, arms open, gesturing, at Shane and the farm and the world. No one ever _listened_ to him. "I'm just—"

"You what, Glenn? You what? You wanna give me a shoulder to cry on, huh? A hand to hold? Well here, go ahead." Shane stretched his hand out, palm open, flat, and Glenn reached for it, hooked his index and middle finger around Shane's thumb, pressed the heels of their hands together. Shane snatched his hand back, fast, like Glenn's touch had burned him, blackened up his skin to ash.

"I'm sorry they hurt you." So, so sorry. Crushed. He'd never been around something like this before. It wasn't just Shane that was affected. Garth and his group had taken things from them all too. That feeling of safety. That hope they put in their fellow man. Glenn thought of running into strangers now and his gut recoiled like the firing of a gun. It was surreal, tragic, dark and horrifying, that this could happen to _Shane_. Glenn had thought he was indestructible, broad and tough and big. Glenn had put his faith in Shane. Glenn had trusted Shane to keep the safe and he hadn't been there to return the favor. He felt like the worst kind of friend.

Shane wouldn't look at him. Shane didn't tell him thanks. Shane just set his shoulders, body language hostile, and Glenn tried to remember everything he'd seen on television about rape victims. He wanted to see Shane be like that, something familiar. He wanted an Olivia Benson to be there to help take Shane's pain away.

"It's not your fault you know." He felt like an after school special. He was channeling all those sexual harassment and date rape assemblies he'd sat through in school. Same rhetoric as always, only now it seemed even more irrevocably true. It took real life applications, apparently. "You're a victim."

Shane laughed. It was not a happy or a pleasant sound.

"Yeah, man. That's the problem," Shane said it, sounded tired, ragged, like a corpse dragged down a gravel road. "I'm gonna…" Shane looked at a loss. He folded his arms behind his head. "I'm just gonna go."

Shane walked, didn't bend one of his legs, kept it straight, dragged it, and Glenn closed his eyes at the dot of blood on Shane's pants, too bright to be old and faded. To red to be anything but fresh.

Dale found him sitting with his head held in both hands. Early afternoon, tail end of morning, and the sun was yellow across the land. It was peaceful, charming, but Glenn couldn't appreciate it. The safety of the farm had been shattered, ruined, and the pieces of it were scattered, everywhere, like crumbled shards of glass.

"You alright, Glenn?" Dale sat down beside him. Glenn tried to put a smile on his face, but he could feel it, like an ocean humming inside him, coming up, burn like indigestion, and he hadn't had a chance to prepare himself for this.

"There are walkers in the barn," he said, panicked, caught like a rabbit in a snare.

"What?" Dale asked, wide eyed, speechless, and Glenn couldn't stop himself, he let his tongue tumble and twist.

"Shane was raped," he blurted and he hated himself in that moment. Hated himself for betraying Shane and Maggie's trust. But his chest felt lighter, and his shoulders looser, and they couldn't expect him to keep all that heaviness inside himself. He wasn't made to bear another person's burden.

"_What_," Dale said, this time not a question, open mouthed.

"Garth and them." He swallowed. He tried not to picture it. He just remembered that sneer to Garth's upper lip. His comment about Maggie. How he'd called her a fresh and pretty cunt. "They raped him, you know, when they took him out into the woods."

"Does Rick know?" Dale rubbed a hand across his face. He smoothed the surprise out like it was a crumb caught in his beard.

"He was there when Hershel told him about the stitches. Yeah. I think so."

"No." Dale shook his head. There was something to him, a thing Glenn couldn't place. Dale didn't seem too bothered, didn't seem worried about Shane. "About the walkers. Does Rick know about the walkers in the barn?"

"Maggie made me promise not to tell. Don't you want to know about Shane?" He didn't get it, took his cap and wrung it in his hands before he put it back atop his head. He couldn't get himself to settle. He was a nervous wreck. This was worse than the secret about Lori and the baby.

"That's none of my business, son." Dale shouldered his rifle. He looked toward the house, to the stable. "I'll talk to Hershel. Don't get too worked up yet."

"Okay," he said and he felt better. It was better, really, knowing Dale was going to lead the way. Dale would figure out what to do about the walkers. Glenn couldn't focus on the barn and Shane. He had to divide his time evenly. The walkers were simple. Bullet or blunt force trauma to the head. Shane was a living, breathing person. His brain was so much more complex. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Dale nodded to him, smiled, world-wise and weary. "Keep your head up. We'll figure these things out."


	9. Chapter 9

_I do not own the characters featured here._

* * *

It was an early, humid morning, quiet contentment around the campfire while everyone chewed, when Glenn spoke up and shattered that peace. Lori had to sit there, Rick's arm looped around her, listening while Glenn took their fragile, carefully arranged existence and set it loose. Then everyone was up, moving, shouting, and before she knew it they were all outside the barn. Shane, eye close to the door, peeking through the cracks. Inside she heard ragged breathing and throaty moans, nails dragging over wood. Walkers, always walkers, drooling and hungry and everywhere, even in this supposed haven. Just a few steps from their front door.

Shane reeled, body tight, anger coiled, and there would be no solving this without a fight. That much Lori knew. Shane didn't back down about anything, ever, especially not when it concerned something like this. Life or death, that was how Shane saw it. Even broken Shane was still many parts the same.

"Hershel thinks they're people," Dale said, preemptive. Put his body between the barn and Shane. "He thinks they're sick."

Shane snorted. The sound that broke free from his throat was technically a laugh. Hollow heave without the sentiment. A noise like the dull crunch of glass.

"Hershel can't see the world for what it is." Shane said Hershel's name, sure, but she knew, from all the conversations she wished they hadn't had, the times he came to her, that when he said Hershel what he meant was Rick.

"He can." Rick tried to touch Shane's back. He recoiled when Shane flinched away, panic and apology spreading across his face. He put his hands down, slowly, as though Shane were his frightened pet. Gentleness, that was what Rick saved for Shane. A little gentility in light of the violence of the world. "He just needs someone to explain it to him."

She saw it, then. The fear in Shane's eyes. Dark and real; shadows that swallowed light. Shane was drowning inside. Flailing and struggling to breathe. And that was her fault, partially. Shane's too. The both of them and she didn't know how it had come to this. When they'd devolved to this extent. When Shane came to love her and Carl so much he put their wellbeing above his own, above Rick's, above everything, and broke each time he got nothing for it. Like she and Carl were something he deserved.

"If he's not gonna listen to reason," Shane said, hand rubbing, fast, over the back of his shaved and swollen head. The bruising had started to fade at the edges, and he was moving away from purple and more toward burgundy—the color of expensive wine. "Then we're just gonna have to leave. We've got options, man." Options, yes. She wondered if Shane had been waiting for this since the day it happened. She hadn't missed it the last two days he'd been up and mobile. The way he wouldn't look out at the trees. The way he wouldn't go out into the western part of the property. The way he never even acknowledged the field he'd followed the men who dragged her and Andrea into. Acted as if it didn't exist.

She wanted to pull him to her, suddenly. Wanted to push him away.

"We're not going to do that." Rick kept his voice quiet, moved his hands slow and smooth. He kept treating Shane like a wounded animal. A fox that had already chewed its trapped foot down to the bone. Rick spoke to keep Shane from biting again, from snapping through, cracked and splintered tibia. "We're staying here, all of us. I'll talk to Hershel. We'll work something out."

"Yeah, Rick. You do that." Shane stormed away, fast as he was able, exaggerated limp. Andrea walked off after him, touched him, hand on his shoulder, hips brushing. There was gratitude there. Gratitude in all the women, her and Andrea and Carol, Maggie and Patricia and Beth up at the house. Everyone knew Shane had kept them safe and she could see the way the group was split. Devotion to Shane but loyalty to Rick. Two conflicting emotions. Lori recognized it but didn't' know what to do.

It wasn't easy to look at Shane and see a protector. A man who bled for her. A man who had taken everything for her and her son. A guardian angel, of sorts, with black and twisted wings. Shane was the one who kept her safe, always, put himself into the role that should have fallen to Rick but didn't because Rick was never there. At the heart of the matter, Shane had been the one to stay behind with her and Carl while Rick had been the one to leave.

* * *

Shane approached her later, a starling tranquility in his face. The type of stare that said he'd come to peace with something. She worried because she didn't know what that something would be. Shane had a whole ocean of things going on inside him. Waters that were cold and harsh and deep. They'd drag her down, she knew, the second that she touched them. Shane was a poison to them all. A poison they'd made that had prospered.

"I know," Shane said, tiny smile. First spark of happiness in his eyes for days. "Rick told me. He told me because you couldn't and now I know." He reached out, palm open, and she moved back, regretted it instantly. Shane hadn't tried to touch anyone other than Carl in days. He'd given an attempt at normalcy and she'd denied him. She hated him, once again, such a strength of intensity that seized her, for making her be the one to seem petty, for putting responsibility on her shoulders she didn't realize was there until it was too late.

"You don't." She shook her head. She knew what he was talking about. She should have known that Rick would use the baby against him, _for_ him, Rick's only way to convince Shane to stay. "Shane it's not the way you think."

"It's mine," he told her, crouching even though she knew it hurt him, could see it in the wince that spread across his face. It was so bad he had to take a knee and she wanted to ask if he'd torn his stitches. "Lori you know it is."

"It's Rick's," she insisted, turning conception dates inside her head. There were no calendars anymore and all she had was a rough estimate, cycles of the moon and the only period she could pinpoint, one from more than a month before, right before everything with Rick and the hospital and the walkers happened. She was confused and knew only what she wanted. That her baby would be Rick's and never Shane's.

If she said it enough, she thought maybe she could will it true. Bring it to life—a lie made into reality; click your heels three times if you believe. She didn't know if she could take living forever with a little piece of Shane. Not the knowing. Looking at her child and seeing that dark hair and dark eyes and square face.

"How can you say that? Rick being the father, Lori, that doesn't make sense."

There was a shine in his eyes, as if she'd given him something to live for, a reason to exist beyond the day to day. Hope for a future that was better than this. She took a minute, the only ounce of thought she'd ever given Shane beyond that bitter introspection and blackened hate, to try and find the picture already formed so clearly in Shane's mind. She saw: Shane sitting by the fire, hair grown out and bruises gone forever, bouncing a baby with those same dark curls on his knee, Rick and Carl looking on, smiling. And it was a fantasy, a sad one, unreachable because Shane could never have it, as much as he wanted it to come true. But she couldn't do it anymore, just take things from him.

"Lori," he repeated, reaching for her again, hand on her knee that she let stay, not because she wanted to, but because it was progress. Because Shane better was something Rick would need. "Just admit it, c'mon. Say it's mine."

She didn't answer. She turned her head and looked away. Neither dismissal nor confirmation. She let the silence carry what she couldn't say.

* * *

Lori watched, open mouthed horror, as Shane fell—shouting and raging—apart at the seams.

Shane, not the Shane she knew but close, so much anger, in his heart and head and chest, anger in his voice, cracked and broken like his battered face. Righteous anger, maybe. And she'd known, sooner or later, that he'd need an outlet. She'd seen it in him, the way he curled his hands into fists. You don't just forget when things like that have been done to you. You find an outlet one way or another, violence or tears. She felt the same sometimes, moments when she looked at Shane, and the fury bubbled up inside her like a geyser bursting from the earth.

Carl struggled against her. She wrapped her arms around him, her fragile little boy, too good for the world they were subsisting in, and pulled him tight to her. She didn't want him to see.

"They ain't sick!" Shane yelled, every word punctuated by his gun. Three shots. Heart, lung, and liver. Second lung and solar plexus. Every part that would keep a real person down for the count.

Then Shane was at the barn again, busting it open, controlled though, she noted. He kept the chain on, enough so that the walkers could only shuffle out one by one. He took his place a few yards back, Glock aimed and ready. Andrea was there in an instant, soon as the first walker made an appearance, gray skin flapping off a rotten cheek. Everyone else too, joining the two of them there, standing by Shane instead of Rick.

Rick, well, she couldn't even look at him. Rick just standing there, walker at the end of his snare growling, straining forward with waterlogged hands, fat with moisture and decomposition. Rick was doing nothing, mouth open, saying half hearted and pleading _don't do this brother_ and knowing full enough that words weren't going to get Shane to stop. Letting him, really. More concerned with letting Shane do as he pleased, shocked that he'd gotten to this point, blaming himself too, no doubt. Rick making Shane's bad behavior his own, his failure, his because he hadn't intervened the second he knew Shane was hurting. But that was on Shane, on her, on all of them. It was a group effort and decision, to somehow acknowledge what had happened to Shane but decide it was better left unmentioned. Everyone more scared than eager to help, no matter the gratitude they gave him.

It was over in seconds. A barrage of bullets, crackling like fire, a veritable slaughter of the already dead. Hershel's friends, family, and neighbors gone in an instant—withered corpses stinking in the sun. Hershel was there looking devastated, grief etched in every wrinkle of his face. Maggie clutching to her father, cheeks wet with tears that collected in her collar, soaked the neck of her blouse dark.

And then it was like she wasn't breathing. Like none of it was real. A nightmare if she was lucky. Couldn't be because it was too awful. Sophia—little lost Sophia—found but not in the sense of it, making her way toward them, and Lori put her hands on Carl's head and turned him from it, forced him into her. She couldn't let him watch it. Not the second death of his best friend.

They were all frozen for a few moments. Even Shane, his anger cooled, depleted, standing with his hand wrapped tight around his gun. He'd shoot her, Lori knew it, shoot her and feel nothing, maybe something, but Rick stepped up finally and took the initiative, cocked his Python and put a bullet into Sophia's skull.

She didn't know what to do any longer. Just felt Carl cry into her, sun beating hot down on her back. She didn't know what was next for any of them, her or Carl or Rick or Shane.


End file.
